


In the Eye Already Bright

by reine_des_corbeaux



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Creative Approaches to Kissing, F/F, Ficlet, Introspection, Melancholy, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:34:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29278542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/pseuds/reine_des_corbeaux
Summary: Gertrude and Agnes, in a moment of togetherness.
Relationships: Agnes Montague/Gertrude Robinson
Comments: 9
Kudos: 22
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	In the Eye Already Bright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gazimon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gazimon/gifts).



Gertrude thinks that she’s too old to be holding onto letters like this. Too old, and too hard, and too human to love a woman of flame and ashes, born to end the world. But she still holds the letters close, and keeps them where she can see them, because she cannot see Agnes, and she cannot hold Agnes’s hand. They’re only fragments of paper, scorched at the edges, words written in the careful hand of a postwar schoolgirl (the inks changing color throughout the page on some letters). She smiles at that, this determination to share information despite the number of melted pens Agnes likely went through in her task. 

_You’re getting soft, Gertrude_ , Gertrude thinks, as she tucks the letter back into her purse and crosses the street. It’s only a small cafe that they’re meeting at, its big front window glowing cheerfully. Agnes is in her usual spot, where she always waits for their meetings, as she has over the years. _Maybe we can meet as women, not as whatever else we are,_ Agnes had said, all those years before. And that’s what they’ve tried. 

Agnes is young now, and she will be young until she dies, an old woman trapped in the fiery shell of a younger one. It only makes Gertrude more conscious of her age. She doesn’t see Gertrude as Gertrude , and Gertrude sees only the flash of her red hair as she walks towards the cafe. It will be nice, Gertrude thinks, to speak to someone she knows will understand. Agnes waves when she finally notices Gertrude, and Gertrude slips into the cafe, ready to speak, carefully positioned across the table from Agnes. 

And after they meet, untouching, each of them eyeing the other’s hands with a sort of curious longing, and after they plan the destruction of the Web’s own agent in the temple of the Eye, they walk out into the rain. The late afternoon is grey enough that streetlights glow orange in the gloom, and droplets seem to sizzle when they hit Agnes’s shoulder. 

Gertrude can’t kiss her, but she wants to. And by the look in Agnes’s eyes, by the hungry longing, she knows that Agnes feels the same. So, despite the rain, she raises the letter she brought to her lips instead, and looks Agnes in her eyes, and kisses the burnt marks on the edge of her page. By Agnes’s smile, sad and longing, Gertrude knows she knows what this means. They are tied together, and yet, this is the closest they have ever been, the closest they can ever be. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from James Merill's "Fire Poem."


End file.
